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An update- I have been using shorter but more frequent practice sessions and watching my hand posture carefully. These efforts seem to have all but eliminated the difficulties. Of course, while I am watching my posture, I manage to hit more ♪ ♫ wrong notes! They never said it would be easy...

I have also been having hand soreness lately.. It actually does not hurt during practice but I can feel some pain in my fingers and wrists especially when my hands are cold - thanks to cold season.

My piano learning journey began something like four (4) months ago now and I might have been a little over enthusiastic in regards to practice hours.

I have read that many hours of practice a day should not cause hand soreness on it's own. The soreness is most likely caused by bad posture, tension when playing and unnatural and/or bad finger technique.

For my part, the main issue I can see is the tension when I'm practicing mainly when sight reading. I can feel the tension in my neck so I guess this can be related in some degree to the hand soreness I have been experiencing. I now try to relax the best I can when practicing.. My teacher also suggested me to keep my wrists a little higher when practicing but overall it was not too bad.

As I don't want this problem to deteriorate any further, I googled this subject quite a bit and have read some very good comments on the book "What Every Pianist Needs to Know About the Body" by Thomas Mark. DinaP also mentioned it in this thread. It wants to make you understand the body mechanisms a little better so you are more aware of what can hurt your body when practicing (or even at the computer keyboard, etc.).

I have not received the book from Amazon yet but I'll certainly provide some feedback here once I complete reading it.

If it's bad enough to cause significant aching/pain, you may need to take some time off.

Also, keep in mind that other uses of the hand away from playing may exacerbate the issue. If you hold a phone in your hand all day, if you type incorrectly on a keyboard (usually with wrists resting on a surface, whether gel or not), if you finger rapidly through pages of copy, etc. Any of these can causes repeated stress-related injuries. There are hundreds of examples, but the most important thing to keep in mind is this: inflammation builds over time. You won't necessarily feel it while performing the specific task. You may only feel it hours later, and often immediately before going to sleep.

If you want to take a look at/tackle any specific problems, I'd be happy to try and help, whether within or outside the realm of the piano.

I haven't played the piano with my left hand for quite a few months now. I have continued my lessons, but we are doing right hand only practice.

I'm curious about your typing comments. I just bought a rest to put in front of my keyboard at work, and a "mouse bean" for my mouse hand, even though my right hand is fine. It feels like they are keeping my hands in a better position than when I don't use them. If I read your post correctly, you are saying these things are bad?

I've been typing for about 35 years, and it's never caused me problems, btw. When I started having wrist problems (about 8 months after starting piano), everything seems to aggravate it at least sometimes.

Hello there!

Let me try to address your response in 'groups', so I can make sure to touch upon each one of your points. The order in which I do so is not necessarily indicative of importance.. I'll go through your post chronologically to try and keep some order to my thoughts.

You first mentioned the keyboard/mouse pads. I don't want you to think I'm against them, per se. What I mean to say is this: the pads help reduce stress injury by absorbing some shock. However, if one typed with "correct technique", the pads would be useless because your wrists would never touch them. Just like you need to keep your wrists up (to keep them from 'breaking') while playing the piano, you should also do the same at the keyboard. With a mouse, only your fingertips should touch it. This will reduce and in some cases, eliminate stress injuries while typing/mousing.

To your second point, this is actually a far more interesting discussion--and one I really didn't know much about until I was twenty years into playing the piano. The wrist is built to handle quite a bit of use. However, it is also very sensitive. Stress injuries and inflammation caused by environmental factors (tendonitis, carpal tunnel syndrome, etc) tend to happen over long periods of time. In many cases, years of misuse. Sometimes, the misuse is so minor (typing on a keyboard) that you don't even notice it. But then you add another stressor (playing the piano), and it exacerbates the injury to the point that you do notice--usually accompanied by significant discomfort and/or pain.

I found out about these compound stressors in my very first job out of college. I was a sales rep, and spent at least five hours a day on the phone. I always held the phone in my left hand. After the first three years, I could barely play with my left hand--but my right hand was fine. I learned about compound stress issues, and tried an experiment. I stopped playing the piano for three months, and switched answering the phone to my right hand. Then, I went back to playing. This time, my left hand was much better, but after about a year-and-a-half, my right hand started to hurt. So, I bought a headset. My right hand healed, but my left hand never completely healed. I still have the issue to this day, though the symptoms are far less cumbersome than they were. If I took six months to a year off, it might heal completely, but while I can stop playing the piano, I use the computer for business.

So, for your case, you may have only had a very minor and manageable stress issue when typing, but once you added piano to the list, your body was no longer able to heal as quickly or completely between uses, and it caused a more recognizable stress issue. I wouldn't say injury, but certainly if you continued that might be the case.

There are ways to combat it, but it is difficult and typically requires a complete retraining on how to type on a keyboard. Fortunately, since you have piano experience, I can describe the basics quickly and easily using piano terms. Keep the wrists up (don't break them by resting them on the desk or a pad). Don't reach with your fingers for a letter. Move your hands/arms just like you would at the piano. It feels weird at first, because now your entire hand and arm is moving (including your elbows), but it is much much better for your hands. Don't grip the keyboard. Press the key you need and move on. Don't "twist" to hit keys out of alignment with your hands (parenthesis, dashes, backspace, shift, tab, etc). This will help, and I sincerely hope that it does.

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Every day we are afforded a new chance. The problem with life is not that you run out of chances. In the end, what you run out of are days.

I recently took a break of piano for one week and started to play again just to find myself waking up the next morning with the same pain I had before the break.

I have read many articles on the web and have applied most precautions explained in "What Every Pianist Needs to Know About the Body" by Thomas Mark...

As a complete beginner, my technique is far from perfect and I was wondering any of you guys know a teacher knowledgeable in piano related injuries in Montreal, Canada? I know something is wrong with my technique but I am just not able to pin-point it.

Just so you know, I already have a piano teacher but he thinks my technique is just fine. He is a very fine teacher but I think he does not know much about injuries as his own technique is quite at the opposite of some of the best practices I have recently read about.

I recently took a break of piano for one week and started to play again just to find myself waking up the next morning with the same pain I had before the break.

I have read many articles on the web and have applied most precautions explained in "What Every Pianist Needs to Know About the Body" by Thomas Mark...

As a complete beginner, my technique is far from perfect and I was wondering any of you guys know a teacher knowledgeable in piano related injuries in Montreal, Canada? I know something is wrong with my technique but I am just not able to pin-point it.

Just so you know, I already have a piano teacher but he thinks my technique is just fine. He is a very fine teacher but I think he does not know much about injuries as his own technique is quite at the opposite of some of the best practices I have recently read about.

Thanks so much.

Can you post a high-res video of you playing something technically challenging? If not, Bluoh is offering skype lessons.. might be able to help you out.

If those options don't work, I also PM'd you.

_________________________
Every day we are afforded a new chance. The problem with life is not that you run out of chances. In the end, what you run out of are days.

The view is not so great as it was filmed with my iPhone sitting at the same level as the keys but I have no support that could make it possible to record from above.

Even I can see that my hand twisting on the video so I could start working on that when I decide to start practicing again (when the pain wears off a little). Any other suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

The view is not so great as it was filmed with my iPhone sitting at the same level as the keys but I have no support that could make it possible to record from above.

Even I can see that my hand twisting on the video so I could start working on that when I decide to start practicing again (when the pain wears off a little). Any other suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

No problem, happy to help.

From the video, I don't see much twisting, but if the angle of your elbow is "real" and not an "optical illusion", then yes, there could be some twisting involved.

What I do see are wrist height, stretching, and isolation issues. It's clear from the video that there is a lot of tension in your playing. I'm not going to be the guy to say playing is 100% of your problem, though.. what's your day job? You would be surprised how often inflammation is attributed solely to whatever you happen to be doing (or were just recently doing) at the moment you feel the pain, when it could have been caused (or exacerbated) hours before by something completely different.

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Every day we are afforded a new chance. The problem with life is not that you run out of chances. In the end, what you run out of are days.

what's your day job? You would be surprised how often inflammation is attributed solely to whatever you happen to be doing (or were just recently doing) at the moment you feel the pain, when it could have been caused (or exacerbated) hours before by something completely different.

I work as a computer engineer :-\ My workstation is ergonomic but finger/hands overuse might not help me at all..

I just took a two week vacation from work and did not touch a computer for more than 30 minutes a day. I was playing piano for 4 hours+ though and I was feeling much pain in my hands and arms at the end of my vacation so I tend to think that the main problem is more of a piano technique problem than a computer keyboard typing technique problem.

I also never had any hand soreness before I started to play the piano.

My best bet right now would be to take some private lessons with a teacher who can teach me proper piano technique and also have someone knowledgeable who can verify my computer setup at work.

Computer engineer is a tough one. I spend a lot of time at the computer myself, and it is not an easy balance. I'd like you to keep your mind open to one critical idea that will help as you work on this overall issue: what you're doing at the keyboard is at least as big a contributor as what you are doing at the piano.

Ergonomic is great, but if you rest your wrists on a gel pad, it's almost as bad as resting them on the ground. When you do this, you isolate the fingers, which is very similar to isolation at the piano. The reason you feel it sooner/faster at the piano is because you push a heavier key down farther, and sometimes hold it much longer than on a typing keyboard. But make no mistake, the computer can cause inflammation just the same. It usually is not as severe, and the symptoms may go completely unnoticed for years (until you add another activity like playing the piano).

If my PM works out, try to apply the principles both to the piano and to the keyboard. Also, keep in mind that these kinds of injuries don't go away overnight. In some cases, they can take 6-12 months to heal, if they ever do heal. That's not to discourage you, just to give you an idea of what you'll be working with.

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Every day we are afforded a new chance. The problem with life is not that you run out of chances. In the end, what you run out of are days.

Computer engineer is a tough one. I spend a lot of time at the computer myself, and it is not an easy balance. I'd like you to keep your mind open to one critical idea that will help as you work on this overall issue: what you're doing at the keyboard is at least as big a contributor as what you are doing at the piano.

Ergonomic is great, but if you rest your wrists on a gel pad, it's almost as bad as resting them on the ground. When you do this, you isolate the fingers, which is very similar to isolation at the piano. The reason you feel it sooner/faster at the piano is because you push a heavier key down farther, and sometimes hold it much longer than on a typing keyboard. But make no mistake, the computer can cause inflammation just the same. It usually is not as severe, and the symptoms may go completely unnoticed for years (until you add another activity like playing the piano).

I agree with everything you write because of my own experience. I never had any problems with my hands or wrists before I started playing the piano. I have a teacher who is teaching me proper technique but I have been through a lot of physical problems. I used to (and sometimes still do) work with a computer for 10-12 hours a day. The way I always do it is with very low wrists resting on the table. Felt very comfortable. But then I started piano and after struggling with many things realized that my arm muscles were completely cramped and getting them back to shape has taken over a year and I am still not there completely. I have other issues also that I now realize are results of computer use and no exercise, but they never bothered me until I started playing.

Hello. I don't really want to hijack threads, but I don't see the point of starting a new one. I have no idea about posture etc (will do more reading up) but how are you supposed to tackle lateral strain of the wrists? When I am playing my left hand on the higher keys, I am sitting dead centre of the piano but my left arm is across my body and the wrist has to turn laterally so that the fingers are in the right positions. Do you know what I mean?

I've tried moving my body closer to the right side of the piano when playing these sections of songs to try get rid of the angle of my left arm across the body, but I can't see this being correct (jumping around all over the stool). I don't know if I just have to get my wrists used to these positions with some training.

Hello. I don't really want to hijack threads, but I don't see the point of starting a new one. I have no idea about posture etc (will do more reading up) but how are you supposed to tackle lateral strain of the wrists? When I am playing my left hand on the higher keys, I am sitting dead centre of the piano but my left arm is across my body and the wrist has to turn laterally so that the fingers are in the right positions. Do you know what I mean?

I've tried moving my body closer to the right side of the piano when playing these sections of songs to try get rid of the angle of my left arm across the body, but I can't see this being correct (jumping around all over the stool). I don't know if I just have to get my wrists used to these positions with some training.

Regards

You actually do have to lean, and quite a bit. The exact amount is different for each person, but you can't sit rigidly and play. It's uncomfortable at first, but you get used to it.

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Every day we are afforded a new chance. The problem with life is not that you run out of chances. In the end, what you run out of are days.

I agree with everything you write because of my own experience. I never had any problems with my hands or wrists before I started playing the piano. I have a teacher who is teaching me proper technique but I have been through a lot of physical problems. I used to (and sometimes still do) work with a computer for 10-12 hours a day. The way I always do it is with very low wrists resting on the table. Felt very comfortable. But then I started piano and after struggling with many things realized that my arm muscles were completely cramped and getting them back to shape has taken over a year and I am still not there completely. I have other issues also that I now realize are results of computer use and no exercise, but they never bothered me until I started playing.

As depressing as it is, I'm still happy to see that I am not alone on that one... I have been so focused on fixing my piano technique that I might have overlooked what I have been doing wrong when I'm at the computer.

I might have developed some very bad habits because low wrists on the table also feels very comfortable to me.

floyd- A very common mistake (and one I used to have myself). It will be awkward at first, but eventually your hands will develop their own reference at the keys. Think about walking.. you don't keep your body in one place so your feet can find the ground. They learn where the ground is.

Pierre/outo- I discovered this one the hard way myself, several years ago. For me, it was a telephone, but all stresses add up. So, believe me, you're not even close to alone. I would guess that the vast majority of people type incorrectly at a keyboard.

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Every day we are afforded a new chance. The problem with life is not that you run out of chances. In the end, what you run out of are days.

Well, after the wrist concerns, I end up hurting my elbow My own fault, I tried playing some things which I learned back when I had obviously developed some finger strength (I haven't played for some years). Tried playing the same things now with no strength and ended tensing my right arm I guess. Will have to give it a couple days rest (sob) and then tackle my posture and alignment slowly.

Can I just ask if the OP has got a medical condition which resulted in hand soreness which is completely non piano related? I practice a lot more than 30 minutes a day, especially when learning new pieces. I am frustrated until I get it right and that can take an hour or more. I never get sore hands. Professional concert pianists who play frequently with orchestras playing concertos do not get sore hands or they would discontinue doing what they do. I use a piano stool but before I had one, I used a dining chair which was too low. I have never played pieces more than two pages in length. Perhaps if I did play longer pieces on a regular basis, I would get sore hands too?

My hands are not "sore" actually, what I get is nerve symptoms, tingling and if I don't stop I get pins and needles. Once after a too long and hard computer session (couldn't help it because of a deadline) my palm actually burned for the rest of the day.

In the beginning I had some muscle pains in my hands from playing large chords but those went away pretty soon after I got used to it. I also used to get muscle pain because my teacher forced me to sit straight and not hang my shoulders. After my first lessons I felt like I had had some pretty heavy exercise

Learning better technique has enabled me to play as long as I want without muscle pain or tiredness. The nerve issues unfortunately recur every now and then, but if I avoid certain pieces I can still play for 2 hours without any trouble.

OP here- I didn't realize what a popular topic this would be! My own situation, as a rank beginner with no lessons, was that I slipped into atrocious posture esp. with my left hand, while trying to play chords with the wrong fingerings, I still haven't decided whether to start lessons, but I'm paying strict attention to hand posture and that seems to be the answer. As far as learning to play piano concertos, and classical music in general, although I enjoy going to the symphony, I do not aspire to play this music. My playing aspirations tend toward non-classical- jazz, pop, the American songbook, etc. I realize some consider these genres not real piano playing, but so be it. When I grow up, I want to play just like Allen Dale. Check him out online, he has about 600 videos on YouTube.

As I said, I do not get sore hands, but I do get a sore back from sitting at the piano for hours on end. I am a perfectionist and when I have a piece to learn, I am never satisfied until I have got it right and am impatient and will sit for hours going over it.

Tough to diagnose based on that info, but you left a few clues to some pretty common issues that I think you can check a couple things and see if they don't help.

When you play pieces you already know, you tend to be more relaxed. When you are playing something you consider "fast", you tend to tense up. Look for locked fingers/hand positions, tightness in your forearms, gripping, an overall lack of fluidity (stop/start motions) in your arms/wrists. Any one of these can cause what you've described.

You may have a bad low wrist habit when playing things you aren't as familiar with. I don't know why this is common, but I've heard quite a few people now common that their wrists were too low, so it could be a common thread.

Also, when you play the same notes repetitively, your hand automatically tends to "lock" in one position. Vary it every so slightly to keep the motion going, your arms fluid and loose, and to help prevent muscle fatigue. Some people call it a "rocking" motion (up/down, left/right, small circles.. there are lots of ways to "rock", but the motions are VERY small so don't overdo it).

Hope it helps. If not, give us more symptoms. If you can post a video, even better.

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Every day we are afforded a new chance. The problem with life is not that you run out of chances. In the end, what you run out of are days.

I played with both hands for the first time in ages last night in my lesson. Wow, did I get rusty! I didn't play long... I was too worried about what would happen. My wrist feels a little funny today, but not exactly sore (I wonder if I'm psyching myself out sometimes). I've also got the name of a doctor who treated a friend of my piano teacher, so hopefully I'll get a proper diagnosis soon. If it really is tendonitis as I suspect, I'm not sure what he can do, but then at least I will know for sure...